a long long time ago, on a planet right beneath your feet, cold blooded dinosaurs roamed the earth. The jungle planet they roamed suited the ectotherms perfectly. We know the planet was a jungle planet because dinosaur fossils have been found on every continent, and on every corner of the Earth.
Then something happened. Either volcanic activity or debris from a cataclysmic meteor strike caused the sun to be blotted out from the sky. The age of dinosaurs was over. This event caused the jungle planet to transform into an ice planet. This period lasted long enough for glaciers to form and reach as far south as Long Island Sound. The large hills in Danvers Massachusetts were created by glacial deposits. If you have ever tried to dig a hole anywhere in New England then you have had the pleasure of moving some large, usually roundish and rather smooth boulders from the Earth. Those are from glacial deposits. And those classic stonewalls you see as you drive around the Northeast were built by hand, with herculean efforts by farmers who needed to clear their fields not just of trees, but of those damn boulders as well.
At some point, the sun shone once again, and the advance of the glaciers ceased. The Ice Age was over. At that moment in time the process of Global Warming was born. Ever since then the Earth has been warming, and the glaciers retreating. By the time the human species, like the dinosaurs, had become the predominate species and at the top of the food chain, the glaciers had retreated amost entirely out of europe and to the most northern climes of North America. By the time European settlers found their way to New England, the glaciers were long gone, and all that needed to be done was to pull those rocks from the fields and farm the land.
And the trend continues today. So, yes Virginia, there is global warming. It exists as certainly as the dinosaurs and the Ice Age existed, and you know that they were here and then gone. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were never any changes to climate or species. It would be as dreary as if there were no dinosaurs ever. There is global warming, and it is not your fault. Like water returning to the sea, the earth will always seek the equilibream of climate that is dictated by the planets rotation around the sun.
Darwin was right. Adaptation is what allows species to survive. Stop thinking you can manipulate or alter things you have no control over. Focus on adapting!
You are SO off base on this. First of all, you skipped over about 60 million years of history. The extinction of the Dinosaurs didn't cause the "ice age" and there have been at least 5 "glacial" periods or Ice Ages, not 1.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, that the climate has changed dramatically over the 4 billion year history of the planet is well known, and irrelevant to the current problem. We have to worry about the climatic norms in the current age we are living in. The planet over the past 2 million years or so is vastly different than it was in prior ages. Mankind evolved in this current age as did most of the plants and animals we share the earth with. The evolution of life and the long term changes in climate are long processes. THe current warming is not.
I did try and compact 4.5 billion years into a short post.
ReplyDeleteYes 1 major and 4 minor glacial periods. I did not say extinction caused the ice age, on the contrary.
You make my point perfectly though.
"the climate has changed dramatically over the 4 billion year history"
Why do you think man can control it? When it was already changing dramatically without us?